Summary

Drawing on the tragic past of Russia and its empire to comment on the issues and ideas of his day, Leo Tolstoy wrote the stories in Divine and Human and Other Stories during the chaos surrounding the 1905 revolution. These stories, presented together for the first time, show the depth of, and contradictions in, Tolstoy's thought as he tried to reconcile his harsh religious beliefs with humanist appeals for justice. Taken as a whole, the collection is a revealing look at the complex life and thought of a literary giant.

Author Notes

Gordon Spence is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand